Three Hours In, 24's Jack Bauer Finally Opens Fire on Passersby

At this point it's still a hypothetical, but if my family ever got murdered by a shadowy spy organization possibly out of retribution for having assisted a known traitor, I would switch jobs. You know? A murdered family is something I am trying to avoid in general, but if my job directly caused my family to be murdered, I would probably go and work in a different field after that. Hopefully off the grid. I could see myself selling turkey legs at a traveling Renaissance Faire or maybe just going to Alaska and living in an abandoned school bus surviving off of the berries. What I'm trying to say is, some jobs are TOO dangerous and when you play with fire you get burned and having your family get murdered would be like a second or third degree burn at the very least. In conclusion, if my family got murdered by spies I would not then become a computer hacker in London. But I would go goth, so that is one way in which I really related to this week's episode of 24.

Technically this was only the third episode of 24, so I hope you weren't expecting a cavalcade of climaxes or a pay-off fandango. What we got instead were some intense commutes sandwiched between scenes of Jack Bauer running around and violently assaulting innocent passerby. Also we got tidbits of info, the biggest question answered being the question of why Chloe had been such a gloomy Gus lately. (It was because her family had been murdered.) But even though Jack had been tracking Chloe's whereabouts and knew she'd been apprehended and tortured by the CIA, he hadn't yet heard about her murdered family. How did he not hear about that? Had he not seen all the sad songs she'd been posting on Facebook? It was not explained.

In an interesting twist, this week's episode of 24 picked up almost immediately where last week's episode left off. This meant that Jack discovered that the evil hacker man had been stabbed in the brain by his Russian bimbo girlfriend and left to die on the floor of a public bathroom, which is easily the most disgusting way to go out. Next thing we knew Jack found a lady's wig in the trash can and chased her through the Chunnel or whatever (I know I'm using that term wrong here, but, come on, chunnel) while Chloe watched it all go down on the CCTV feeds. Have you noticed that 24 constantly endorses Big Brother type stuff? So far none of this season could exist without constant video surveillance, so, um, cool? Also, drones seem neat.

Anyway, the sexy murder lady escaped because she took out a switchblade on the subway and cut her leg and then smeared blood on her face and accused Jack Bauer of trying to hurt her, which caused local British heroes to try and stop him, so Jack Bauer punched them all in the face. Nothing about this situation was unusual to me. But then the lady got away and Chloe didn't see which taxi she got into because she'd seen a small boy and started reminiscing about her dead family. (Ugh, get over it, Chloe.) Then Chloe tearfully told Jack Bauer about her dead family and he immediately manipulated her grief into a teachable moment about how Chloe should now devote herself to Jack Bauer. He's a good friend.

As it turned out, the sexy murder lady wasn't just a fake Russian bimbo turned brain-stabber, she was actually the daughter of Catelyn Stark, the widow of an Al-Qaeda leader who had been killed by a drone. That is why Catelyn Stark wanted to control all the drones and bomb London: out of revenge. But in my opinion this was not going to go well; do I even need to bring up the last time Catelyn Stark made a speech to her child about doling out tough justice in a complicated realm? Meanwhile we met the daughter's hunky husband who was NOT happy that she'd spent three weeks doing sex to an evil computer hacker, but she reminded him that sometimes in order to make an omelette you have break out some sex moves on an evil computer hacker. Then she proceeded to try and sex him up while Catelyn Stark watched on the security cameras. It was like something out of Sliver and it was sexy as hell.

Oh, I almost forgot about the blonde lady from Chuck. Even though she's in hot water around the precinct for having married a literal traitor, she was NOT about to start following rules. This meant that she hit a drug kingpin in the head with her gun and then forced him to ride in her car and even threatened to drop him off in the wrong neighborhood until he 'fessed up about whatever. Honestly, this didn't matter all, really, I think they just needed to make sure the blonde lady from Chuck was still on the show.

Meanwhile the President got yelled at by Parliament, but it's like, join the club, guy. We've all been yelled at by Parliament at one time or another. I will never forget the time they viciously berated me for what felt like hours. I was humiliated to be honest, and in this situation it looked like the President was too. Even Prime Minister Stephen Fry was like, "Damn."

The episode ended with Jack Bauer trying to sneak into the embassy so he could prove that the drone attack from last week had been due to a hacker. But then Chloe's grumpy computer friend intentionally tried to get Jack Bauer caught by faxing over the wrong credentials to the security booth, so Jack Bauer had to resort to Plan B, which was SHOOTING innocent passerby and then scrambling through the gates into the embassy. That is what's known as quick thinking.

I can't hide my opinion from you any longer: This episode of 24 was pretty good. Please don't murder my family.

[Image via Fox]

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While pretty much everything else on 24 is absolutely true-to-life, I was tremendously saddened to see them cheap out and have the President address Parliament in what appeared to be a meeting room in a local Best Western.